Going digital - part two

'Going digital' doesn't necessarily mean that your business has been transformed. To become fully digital enterprises, companies need to shift the focus inward and innovate the employee experience.

Part two

Looking out versus looking in

Financial services companies continue to effectively leverage digital technologies to innovate and improve the customer experience. But to become fully digital enterprises, companies need to shift the focus inward and innovate the employee experience.

It appears that many businesses have not fully explored what it means to be digital, from the inside out. The focus has primarily been leveraging digital capabilities to become customer experience champions, to increase those all-important net promoter scores. But there has often been a lack of attention to the other side of the coin, the employee experience.

Digital transformation must include employees and colleagues as well as customers. Providing a great customer experience with mobile app and browser solutions at the point of sale is a good step forward, but asking colleagues to work with a desk telephone, paper and pen based processes is not going to transform the business.

Your colleagues need the right tools so that they may get on with their tasks without any barriers standing in their way. That means giving them full access to all the information they require and allowing them to communicate with their colleagues and customers, regardless of the time of day or where they are.

There is also an employee dimension that is often overlooked. The desire for employees to be in a future facing company, a digital company where they can develop their digital skills. Don't underestimate it, 76% of respondents consider it very important or extremely important to work for an organisation that is digitally enabled or is a digital leader according to Deloitte.

The new norm

In the Forrester 2017 Predictions paper the writers noted that “today’s customers reward or punish companies based on a single experience — a single moment in time.” “This behaviour was once a millennial trademark, but it’s now in play for older generations. It has become normal.”

Digital businesses need to be in a state of constant revolution. You don’t make a change and then just sit back and wait for the next five years of business as usual. You need to build a new momentum and rhythm in your business that reflects the new reality.

Many companies already have a strategy of continuous improvement in their businesses but it needs to include continuous change and evolution in how things work, the status quo is not enough.

If we look at a customer’s engagement with your business, they have an experience and an expectation and a perceived value for each interaction.

Let’s show that as a formulae: Experience/Expectation = Perceived value

With an initial successful engagement where the expectation is matched or surpassed by the experience, the consumer will have a positive perceived value of the transaction and your business.

However as other businesses develop incremental changes in their offerings, even other types of business, consumer expectations rise and the perceived value of your proposition can drop, even become negative.

This is known as the digital dilemma – it means you need to continue to innovate, continuously evolve.

Give a little digital nudge

Digitalisation is more than delivering an efficient, automated and low cost financial service. It's about ongoing innovation in response to the continually evolving consumer expectations, experience and the perceived value of your services and products.

There is a need to have an outside in view to design a winning experience, deliver good customer outcomes and satisfy desires.

We need to consider the holistic experience that transcends touchpoints. The phrase I have heard repeated recently is “personalised touchpoints, tailored to the moment of need”.

As an example, airlines like Easyjet have tried to simplify the boarding process, once you get round the speedy boarding conundrum. So instead of a pass being posted to you, or printed at home and folded beyond recognition or hidden in your luggage, you can use the Easyjet app and display your pass at the gate.

But as my mobile knows from my diary that I am flying at 2.30pm, boarding at 2pm. Google maps has shown me the best route to the airport and the mobile has my location through GPS. Why doesn’t the app surface the pass onto the screen as soon as take it out to show it at the desk?

That is the next level up, the digital nudge, and when someone delivers that, expectations rise and if I don't experience that with other airlines, my view of their perceived value drops.

It doesn't stop. And that's why digital transformation is a journey not a destination.